After a bit of time to consider, I think the 15-minute phone interview I had a couple of days ago with Lotus chief Jean-Marc Gales – during which he talked of making other Lotus models outside of sports cars as a route to sustainable profits – was more encouraging than any I've ever had with a Lotus boss.

And I've done the lot - a dozen of them over the past 30-odd years, going right back to Colin Chapman.

What made chatting with Gales special? The fact that the ex-PSA chief's plans for the Hethel-based sports car company seem entirely rational, something only sparingly associated with Lotus revival plans of the past.

In this game you get slowly better at recognising rationality as the fortunes of the UK's unique patchwork of car companies ebbs and flows: as rolling disasters like the Phoenix Four's doomed Rover Group have imploded, and as tiny hotbeds of genius like the 100-a-year Ariel Motor Co. have prospered. You grow a better – though never infallible – nose for knowing what will work and what won't.

At Lotus, Gales wants to stabilise the business for the short term by cutting costs (which, sadly, means jobs) and by improving existing products that already have a powerful appeal. He reckons he can sell 3000 cars a year quite soon, and why not? He's on course to do 2000 in 2014 without much of a run-up.

Then he wants to employ the Porsche strategy: to make cars of other formats – just as Porsche does Cayennes and Panameras - to generate the money it takes to keep building the iconic sports cars that truly drive the company's image and reputation. That's harder.

Right now it is a bit difficult to imagine Lotus launching any model that isn't a sports car. There's no tradition for it. Neither was there a tradition for the Porsche Cayenne.

But there's expertise enough at Hethel and manufacturing power enough at Proton to develop platforms capable of being shared by the two marques in such a way that each version had a unique and distinctive appeal. After all, when considering a Range Rover Evoque, no-one thinks of a Ford Focus, though the pair are closely related.

Of course, there are some very high hurdles ahead. Not the least of them might be a narrow-minded band of professional critics unwilling to see a Proton-Lotus enterprise succeed.

More difficult still, the partners themselves will have to develop skills at design and insights into what drives customer appeal – plus great discretion at keeping the marques miles apart – which, frankly, they haven't displayed up to now.

This is why Jean-Marc Gales's ability at galvanising the much-abused talents of Lotus's car creators will be so critical to any success.

He's a grown-up who has worked in the real world. PSA was – and remains – no picnic. Gales knows what it will take to re-found Lotus and still he says it can work. For that reason I believe him.

For that reason also I reckon the plan (what little of it we know) is the right one. If we want to see Lotus sports cars survive into the 2020s and 2030s, we'd better hope for the success of Lotuses with a look and purpose we never bothered to imagine.

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Didn't we read something similar when Bahar took the reins? We did. Until Lotus gets some money - really huge amounts of money, which it won't - it's no more going to follow the Porsche example than I am.

Given the SUV goldrush shows no signs of abating they might as well go straight there and skip the sedan genre altogether.

But - and it's a big but - it's very hard to imagine Lotus' current architecture and manufacturing process providing the required hygiene levels of safety, quality, durability and NVH for people coming out of mainstream vehicles.

The financial commitment needed to invest in more 'grown up' vehicles and their attendant manufacturing solutions is way out of their reach, demanding many hundreds of millions of pounds of investment.

So a partnership would appear to be the solution, but even then you're still talking hundreds of millions unless major parts of the vehicle 'top hat' structure are shared, which would mean it will still look like a Proton basically. Fail.

What option does that leave them? Some sort of high-riding mid-engined aluminium bathtub with a composite body? The beach buggy reinvented for the 21st century.

'For that reason also I reckon the plan (what little of it we know) is the right one' - classic. Granted they could perpetually facelift the Elise to lift its appeal to new buyers but for how long can they sustain this?

A Lotus SUV to compete in a crowded marketplace on merit.... seriously? Lotus cars probably needs to be acquired at this stage. They´ve just pulled the Evora from the American market too. Perhaps the marque can come full circle and do something with the Caterham group of companies?... no end of cash there, it seems. Or look to its heritage and links with Ford motor company for example. It sure as hell can´t make it on its own.

I can't see Lotus surviving except as an AMG style "engineered by Lotus" sub-brand owned by one of the bigger players, probably Asian, like Kia or Ssangyong. That's happened in the past with the Lotus Carlton, Lotus Sunbeam and Isuzu Piazza. The Carlton and Sunbeam are pretty sought after today so who is to say that won't work..

The problem for Lotus is that the world has changed. People who want something different from the mainstream are now drawn to cars like the Tesla S and not little sports cars that have no technical innovation.

I am afraid that Lotus is just like Lancia. A strong brand, sure, but no one will really miss it when it's gone as a manufacturer, which can't be far away. There'll be a dead cat bounce with lots of wailing from people who say they love Lotus (but would'nt ever buy one), but it's all over, surely?

...hand on heart say that they weren't seduced in exactly the same way a few years ago by the plans of DB?

Lotus have been treading water for years and years. Their market share, market recognition and desirability has steadily ebbed away to a speck. But now we have new grand plans, a bleeding SUV(!), because they sell well don't they?!

Lotus has immense engineering know-how and a fine tradition of great driving sports cars. But they also have decades of mismanagement, hair-brain schemes and a woeful failure to build on the momentum of earlier achievements. Lotus should be the British Ferrari, but I think their time has passed.

Does Lotus still have 'immense engineering know-how', I wonder. We take that on trust because none of these companies can be open about their consulting work. It wouldn't surprise me if much of the know-how is now too superannuated to be useful, or simply gone having walked through the door to somewhere better paid. isn't the most recent evidence that they had it once the Elise?

I think the SUV idea has merit if done well. Imagine a Bowler turned down from 11 to 8 or so. If they retain much of the Lotus lightness, but make it easy to get into and out of, capable of carrying 4 in some comfort while still being great to drive... why not?

I loved the Europa SE I tried but I couldn't have bought it; my wife would have refused to get into and out of the thing, and I can't argue with that. Fix that, put a decent boot on it and two more doors and seats (so it meets my employer's vehicle requirements) and it'd be great. And it could still be a Lotus in looks and feel.

Porsche is a massively well funded, massively profitable, highly aspirational brand. The Cayenne and Panamera prove very clearly that you can stick a Porsche badge on any old heap and punters will queue up to buy it. It's just so dumb to assume sticking a Lotus badge on a Proton will result in anything anyone would want to buy. Lotus is simply not an aspirational brand, especially not at Porsche prices as the otherwise excellent but tragically Porsche-inspired Evora proves beyond doubt.

However a Lotus badge would be aspirational and could command a premium in the MX5 space. A small, light, simple, roadster is something Lotus could do better than anyone. How about a front-mid mounted 197bhp Toyota flat-four from the GT86 to bring back the Elan name? Doesn't that sound more sensible? It could be designed and developed at Hethel, and made in Malaysia in large numbers. Start small and watch it go. Mazda built an empire from copying the original Elan. It's high time Lotus started copying Lotus, stick to what they do best and forget all about Porsche SUVs.

Lotus does have a history of building cars with more than 2 proper seats and it's a fairly solid one too so I think its best if Lotus becomes a version of Alpina to be survive with this plan. It'd give them a firm base to build on in the short term, with the potential profits benefitting their core models.